Mediating multimodality in EFL classrooms: privileging semiotic competence

Abstract

With advances in information technology and the inauguration of a digital era, the communicative landscape in social, cultural, and economic sectors is becoming more multimodal. This has challenged traditional perceptions of literacy practices. School teachers are particularly faced with the challenge to address the educational implications of this shift from a primarily print-based typographic mode to a more multimedia screen-based digital literacy world. Documented studies showing how second language teachers respond to this challenge are scanty. The present paper presents naturally-occurring classroom data showing how two EFL (English as a foreign language) teachers in Hong Kong mediated multimodality in two junior secondary classrooms. A micro-analysis of the complex interplay between the teacher-pupil discourse and the multimodal artifacts reveal significant differences regarding how the two teachers conducted their teaching through the deployment of the multimodal pedagogical artifacts. Based on the classroom data, we discuss how one teacher’s ability to utilize semiotic means (e.g. spatial and visual resources, movement and body posture, voice quality, gesture) beyond lexico-grammatical meaning-making resources seemed to have resulted in very different learning outcomes on the part of the students compared to those in the other classroom despite the students’ similar academic and social backgrounds. Findings from our analysis strongly support the need for language teachers to recognize the various affordances and constraints that multimodal texts and new technologies can bring into the classroom, and their crucial role as an effective semiotic mediator.